Purpose: Recent research on the potential of using eye-tracking to measure reading comprehension ability suggests that the relationship between standard eye-tracking measures and reading comprehension is influenced by differences in task demands between comprehension assessments. We compared standard eye-tracking measures and scanpath regularity…

The production effect--whereby reading words aloud improves memory for those words relative to reading them silently--was investigated in two experiments with 7- to 10-year-old children residing in Brisbane, Australia. Experiment 1 (n = 41) involved familiar printed words, with words read aloud or silently appearing either in mixed- or…

Poor comprehenders are a significant subgroup of poor readers who, due to their ability to read aloud accurately, are often difficult to identify. This study aimed to determine whether assessment using two oral language tasks, mapped onto the two components of the Simple View of Reading, would provide an efficient approach to identification.…

Purpose: Readers can draw on their knowledge of sound-to-letter mappings to form expectations about the spellings of known spoken words prior to seeing them in written sentences. The current study asked whether such orthographic expectancies are observed in the absence of contextual support at the point of reading. Method: Seventy-eight adults…

Many studies that examine parent-child interactions while reading digital texts focus on the reading of e-books. Rather less is known about parent-child interactions and reading aloud of other screen texts that occur during young children's everyday use of digital technologies at home. This article presents the findings from a conversation…

Nonword reading measures are widely used to index children's phonics knowledge, and are included in the Phonics Screening Check currently implemented in England and under consideration in Australia. However, critics have argued that the use of nonword measures disadvantages good readers, as they will be influenced by their strong lexical knowledge…

It is well known that information from spoken language is integrated into reading processes, but the nature of these links and how they are acquired is less well understood. Recent evidence has suggested that predictions about the written form of newly learned spoken words are already generated prior to print exposure. We extend this work to…

This research examines the acquisition of letter-position processing. Study 1 investigated letter-position processing in Grades 1-6 and adult readers, using the occurrence of specific error types as the outcome measure. Between Grades 1 and 2, there was a shift from making more other-word to making more letter-position errors. This shift was a…

This study investigated the relationship between both receptive and expressive prosody and each of three reading outcomes: accuracy of reading aloud words, accuracy of reading aloud nonwords, and comprehension. Participants were 63 children aged 7 to 12 years. To assess prosody, we used the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech Communication…

Book reading is one of the most important investments that parents make in their children's literacy development. This study investigated risk factors associated with the absence of book reading at ages 2, 4 and 6 years. A holistic view of the multiple ecologies of child development guided the study across a sample of approximately 4000 children…

The knowledge and practices associated with improved outcomes for readers have yielded converging evidence about practices associated with improved reading outcomes for primary students. This considerable intervention knowledge can be beneficial for English teachers working with struggling secondary readers. Fluency is one critical element that…

This article relates aspects of my investigation into the effects of two differing approaches to teaching comprehension of narrative texts on students' task engagement and text enjoyment, and comprehension. The results demonstrate a complex relationship between engagement and comprehension. They highlight that academically weaker students can be…

A sample of boys of Australian and Italian descent was divided into groups according to silent reading comprehension scores. The students' oral reading was recorded and the resulting miscues categorized. When oral reading accuracy was examined, the lowest level Italian group read more accurately than the equivalent Australian students. (Author/MLW)

Children with reading and/or spelling difficulties were examined to test ability to read and spell using correspondence rules and whole-word rules. Children deficient in both reading and spelling skills had difficulties using correspondence rules to spell and read and difficulties with whole-word reading and spelling. (Author/DB)

A group of 21 hard-of-hearing and deaf children attending primary school were trained by their teachers on the production of selected consonants and on the meanings of selected words. Speech production, vocabulary knowledge, reading aloud, and speech perception measures were obtained before and after each type of training. The speech production…